6/28/24

IF AN OLD MAN HAS A BAD NIGHT,
WILL A NATION PAY THE PRICE?

A DISASTER.
     Probably a catastrophe.
     Worse than your worst fears.
   President Joe Biden sounded old and looked old during last night’s “debate,” from the opening to the closing moments of one of the most excruciating 90-minutes in American politics.
     Whatever Joe Biden said was almost impossible to follow, jumping from subject to subject with his hoarse, weak voice, mumbling, stopping-and-starting, losing his way, forgetting, chewing his words, missing every opportunity – and there were many – to deliver rhetorical punches.
     Donald Trump, with his fake hairdo and whatever  it is he puts on his face, and despite his bizarre clownish expressions, looked and sounded like a spring chicken in comparison.
     A chicken laying lies by the dozen. But no matter.
     If you were a cartoonist or a satirist trying to make fun of a man too old to old to work the buttons of his TV remote, much less be a commander-in-chief, you could not have created a crueler caricature  than Joe Biden delivered last night.
     After last night, Biden surely will plummet in the polls – and not just in the seven “battleground” states where he has been lagging – but he will lose the near  overall  tie he’s achieved so far.

 IT’S POSSIBLE that my assessment is too pessimistic and that, somehow, Biden will pull it out. Maybe he’ll be a superstar in the second debate. Maybe some crisis, some major event will prove him to be a national hero.
     Anything is possible. And none of us should give up.
     But Biden did himself no favors last night, not for the nation, not for his fellow 81-year-olds.
      Where was the man who delivered such a powerful and inspiring speech at the State of the Union? He surely wasn’t in Atlanta, on CNN’s debate stage.
     It’s terrible on two counts:

• The most obvious is that Donald Trump has no business being president, and now it seems he very well might be.
• Less obvious, it was Joe Biden’s performance on TV that was terrible, not his presidency during his first term, nor what his leadership would likely be in a second term.

 
SO, IT WAS AN ILLUSION.
     That's what appeared on our TVs last night, an illusion.
      I believe that Biden remains capable, even inspired, as a president.
     We did not see the  real Joe Biden, the seasoned, practiced politician, with his sound judgement and forward vision for the country.
      What we saw, instead, was an illusion.
      It only looked like Biden had lost his way, if not his marbles, and that Trump was the one with the energy and vitality. But that also an illusion, but the kind of snake-oil fakery that can put a fast one over on  the voters.
      No small matters, illusions.
      Democracy in the U.S. will collapse if Trump wins on Nov. 5.
     Racism, violence, ignorance and injustice in its many forms will become the foundation of a new American character and culture.
     And climate change will destroy the earth.
      All because an old man had a bad night.