I think a lot of liberals and Democrats are hiding behind the question of whether the president should withdraw from the presidential election and how Democrats should proceed if he decides to do so. I think a lot of us (and I’m going to be biased for the sake of fairness) spend too much time talking about what other people think about Joe Biden and not enough time talking about what we think.
More to the point, I think a lot of liberals and Democrats don’t mean what they mean when they say last week’s debate was a disaster. They don’t say it because if they said it out loud for everyone to hear, they would say it. ought They were ashamed of themselves. They recoiled in horror at the sight of an old man acting like an old man.
I think it’s important to say it clearly. If Biden is too old for you, you should say it. You should say that he shouldn’t be president because he’s too old, not because you think undecided voters won’t vote for him. Then we can have a serious conversation that starts with this question:
If Biden is too old – that is, if his “mental acuity” is so compromised – how do we explain everything he has accomplished, including Friday’s jobs report, which showed the economy added 206,000 jobs? Mail He reported that “although interest rates remain high, weighing on some parts of the economy, the labor market continues to boost workers, wages, and consumer spending, preventing a broader recession.”
How do we explain this achievement?
You can’t. And since you can’t, we must conclude that the president’s campaign is now in jeopardy, not because of substance, but because of vibes. The downside is that he could lose because of it. The upside, however, is that some of those vibes can be changed. Balance and confidence can be restored, and you can fight like hell.
If you are old, you are finished
If the president had been so far away, someone somewhere would have pointed out to him the moment when things went very, very wrong. I am not talking about decisions, but about mistakes: serious mistakes, with consequences, not forced.
Nobody has, Not even in the last few monthsa time when some argue he has shown rapid decline. What about the war between Israel and Hamas, the worst Middle East conflict any president has faced? No. He has handled it like the statesman he is. The inflation? No. He brought it down and dodged a recession. What about the “border crisis”? No. In fact, Biden not only didn’t screw it up, he outsmarted Donald Trump. A change in border policy has led to a record drop in illegal crossings.
But I guess Biden’s accomplishments don’t count for much these days, because for God’s sake, he lost his train of thought a few times!
If there’s one word that can describe the Biden administration up until last week’s “disastrous debate,” it’s “orderly”: civil servants running the federal government according to the law and Biden’s preferred policies. If, on the basis of that “disastrous debate,” you no longer believe Biden can be president, you should reckon with the fact that he has been president. If you think he’s been showing signs of mental decline for months, you should reckon with the fact that no one can point to a single mistake he’s made in all that time.
And since no one can point to a serious, consequential, unforced error that resulted from his supposed mental deterioration, we must conclude something that is unpleasant to conclude. Perhaps the “disastrous debate” says more about us than it does about Biden. It showed us something none of us had ever seen before, a president aging in public. And our reaction showed us something else: that no matter how successful you are, how good you are, how decent you are, how deserving you are: if you are old, you are finished.
Now is the time to respond.
Aging seems to be at the root of most reactions to the president’s performance. Normal aging, like losing one’s train of thought, cannot and will not be tolerated. (If Biden displays several mental lapses, or even just one, it’s over.) Because discrimination against the elderly is so common, and because weakness, which is associated with age, is so commonly despised in politics, most reactions seemed quite reasonable.
And since most of the reactions seemed quite reasonable, many liberals and Democrats lost their nerve. Times The editorial board and its columnists, including liberal ones, undermine our self-confidence. And we allowed that to happen, in part, because we did not fully appreciate the ageist lens through which we viewed the debate.
Liberals and Democrats spent more time talking about what other people think of Biden than talking about what we think. That allowed fairly reasonable arguments based on ageism to go unanswered. But that was then. Now is the time to answer them.
