• Home
  • Blog
  DANGEROUS TIMES
  • Home
  • Blog

3/1/2023

3/1/2023

3 Comments

 

JOE BIDEN'S GREAT. IT
DOESN'T MAKE HIM AN
'INDISPENSABLE MAN'

Picture
 THERE ARE TWO REASONS why Joe Biden should not run for a second term.
    One is obvious. He's too old.
    The other goes back to something Donald Trump said after he’d been nominated by the Republican party in 2016:
    “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”
    That’s the Indispensable Woman or Man Theory – a delusion common to leaders and their partisans in both democratic and authoritarian governments, and one which is as silly as it is dangerous.
    Of 331.9 million people in the United States, only one  is capable of defeating whatever terrifyingly awful candidate the GOP will  choose to run in 2024? And,  there’s only one human fit to govern the United States of America for the next four years?
    Give me a break.
   There aren't two people out of 331.9 million who could successfully run for president and be a good one? Not seven? Not 15.3; not 26; not 1,257?
    Granted, there are few to zero Democrats who currently make me or anyone else I know confident and optimistic about the coming campaign.
    The Washington Post recently ran one of its periodic lists ranking the “top” Democratic candidates. Among the Big 10:
    • J.B. Pritzker
    • Josh Shapiro
    • Jared Polis

Picture
J. B. PRITZKER
Picture
JOSH SHAPERIO
Picture
JARED POLIS
   In the Post’s ranking, higher number are worse than lower lower ones. So, J.B. is Number 10; Josh is Number 9; and Jared is Number 4.
    When I first scanned the list, I had absolutely no idea who Number 4 is, and I am both embarrassed and mad at myself about that. Same goes for the other two;  the remaining seven names at least I recognized.
    I’ve attached the list to end of this article. See how many you recognize. In any case, it’s not a great list, except for Number 1.
    You’d think this would undermine my argument that there is no such creature as the Indispensable Woman or Man, because,  if someone is supposed to keep the Free World free, a voter, at Step One, should at least recognize their name, and little pleasure zones should show up on CT scans of our brains when we hear or read their names.
    But it should be noted that despite my shameful ignorance of the list, these folks are  people who have been in the news lately, and who hold important government positions, backgrounds that qualify them for consideration for higher office.
    The "I alone" argument undermines the whole concept of democracy.

ANOTHER ARGUMENT that could reject my No Indispensable Person Theory is Joe Biden.
    Looking back on 2020, Joe may have been the only candidate at the time who could unite the Democrats, and pick up enough Independents and a smattering of Republicans to drive Trump from under his Oval Office rock.
    In my lifetime, Biden has been the best president, which sometimes isn’t saying much. The fact is, most presidents have terrible flaws, just like the people who vote for them. But some of them have been okay, and a few were better than that.
  Anyway, Joe’s been terrific. There’s his fight for the “soul of America;” his vision for huge, progressive spending programs; his ability to run a competent, decent government; how he's set out an inspired foreign policy. These are real accomplishments.
    Remember how bad we felt every day that Donald Trump was president? Now, imagine how bad we’d feel today if Trump were overseeing national healthcare, climate policy, education, inflation control, Ukraine’s defense and everything else that a president does, like go to concerts at the Kennedy Center. 
    But if Joe Biden is the only person whom the Democrats can come up with to defeat the Republican ogre, the Democratic Party and the country is in peril. And I choose to think that's the case.  

Picture
 BUT OLD is old.
    Eighty is old; Joe is 80.
   And news bulletin, when you turn 80 you don’t stay that way - you keep getting older. So, on Nov. 20, 2024, Joe will be 82. He’ll be 82 when he’s inaugurated the following January. When he turns over the keys to the Resolute Desk to his successor in early 2029,  he’ll be 86.
    This assumes that he doesn’t drop dead in the meantime.
    I’m 80, and it's one subject I know about.
    A fair number of my contemporaries are in their 80s, and some of them have died. Sure, some died earlier. A reporter friend of mine, who had exactly the same birthday, year and day, as me, died 36 years ago. Some of my friends will live late into their 80s and longer. I’ve interviewed people in their 90s who have crackerjack memories and incisive minds.
    But, in general, don't get your hopes up.
    Our failure to understand all the things that can go wrong with people in their 80s is just as head-in-the-sand fantasy as pretending that people actually don’t die.
    Sure, Joe Biden  could surprise everyone and live out his second term, assuming he gets through this one. The Social Security Administration has a table that estimates that at age 80, an American man, on average,  might expect to live another 8.43 years.
    You could argue that because Joe Biden has been such a terrific president, a good Plan B would be to elect a superior vice president, whom you’d feel perfectly happy, after Joe’s funeral, to fill in for Joe. But if that’s the case, why not have her or him run for the top job in the first place and skip the drama.
    In general, the theory that one and only one person can save democracy is fiction.
    There are lots and lots of people who can do the job of president.
    And they're lots and lots of people who can do it better than Joe Biden has.
    That's true, even if, at this point, we’ve never heard of them or don’t remember their names.
                                                                                  * * *

Picture
In case you’re in the same pickle as me and don’t have a clue as to who should run for president in 2024, here’s the Washington Post’s complete Top 10 list of leading Democratic contenders, along with their major credentials.

10. J.B. Pritzker, Illinois governor.
9. Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania governor.
8. Bernie Sanders, senator from Vermont, who was a contender for the Democratic nomination for president in the last election. Bernie’s 81.
7. Amy Klobuchar, U.S. senator from Minnesota.
6. Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan governor and target of a failed kidnapping plot by right-wing nut jobs.
5. Gavin Newsom, California governor.
4. Jared Polis, Colorado governor.
3. Kamala D. Harris, vice president of the United States and former California senator.
2. Pete Buttigieg, Biden’s secretary of transportation, formerly the 32nd mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
1. Joe Biden, president of the United States, former vice president and U.S. senator.  His birthday is Nov. 20, 1942.


3 Comments
Neale
3/3/2023 02:51:24 am

The Democrats' task is not to find the best person who could be president, but the best person who is electable who could be president-- who could defeat T**** if he is nominee, or Ron DeSantis.

Reply
Jody McPhillips
3/3/2023 12:06:38 pm

all true. And I never heard of Jared Polis either.

Two points: we don't know people like that because the small community of political reporters has their collective head up their butt. They march in lockstep, for the most part, and they spend too much time in DC, on TV and writing their books. Remember David Broder of the Post? (who died, interestingly, at 81). You could count on him to put in the time on the ground, rather than regurgitating crap from polls, operatives and focus groups. And his stuff was more insightful as a result. The second point is Democrats can seem like little ratty feeble people at first glance, and then they surprise you. I'm not nuts about the list; but in 2020 Biden was not my choice, and he has performed extraordinarily well. Just watched him award the Medal of Honor. Classy, human, and rebuilding our tattered national sense of decency. Such a relief that he has erased the Trump stain from the White House. Well, gone a long way towards it, anyway.

Reply
Craig Harris
3/5/2023 08:34:27 pm

As Neale noted, the Democrats need to find "the best person who is electable who could be president-- who could defeat T**** if he is nominee, or Ron DeSantis." The hard part there is "electable" and able to defeat Ron DeSantis. (If the Grand Cheeto runs again, he would galvanize the Democrats, and there are a lot of Republicans who do not want to see him back in office. They may not vote for the Democratic nominee, but they might sit this one out or do a write-in for Ronald Reagan's ghost or a reasonable facsimile thereof.)

The problem would be the smears and innuendos and mischaracterizations against Democratic nominees. Numbers 2 and 4 on the list are both gay. That's fine by me, but the homophobic tropes would be in full swing, and DeSantis has learned (from guess-who) how to plant fear and distrust and distaste for people he would paint as heathens, who by their very being are anathema to what America stands for. (Drag performances anyone?) Kamala has done an able job, but she has not elevated herself in the public eye. Then you get to number 5, the governor of a state that is seen by many Democrats as progressive, but would be tarred as the bleeding edge of wokeness, an evil word in the hands of the uninformed. (Do those people even know what woke means?)

I would have voted in a heartbeat for Amy Klobuchar in 2020, and Whitmer at least has the notoriety of having been the target of (feel free to pick an adjective or phrase) vigilantes for the crime of not being a Cheeto sycophant (or nazi).

Bernie Sanders is old news and a year older than Biden.

Josh Shapiro. Please let him stay as the governor of Pennsylvania, where I live. We need him.

That brings us to number 10, governor and entrepreneur (and unknown) Pritzker.

(sigh)

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    BRIAN C. JONES
    Picture
      I'VE BEEN a reporter and writer for 58 years, long  enough to have  learned that journalists don't know very much, although I've met some smart ones. 
      Mainly, what reporters know comes from asking other people questions and fretting about the answers.
       This blog is a successor to one inspired by our dog, Phoebe, who was smart, sweet and the antithesis of Donald Trump. She died Feb. 3, and I don't see getting over that very soon.
       Occasionally, I may try to reach her via cell phone.


     

    February 2023
    January 2023
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Blog