7.12.24

A BIT OF LUCK AND A LITTLE LOVE
COULD GET DEMOCRATS THROUGH
THEIR CRUSADE TO STOP TRUMP

WHAT’S THE SINGLE, most important crisis of the election?
     Is it deciding whether to replace Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee?
     Or shaming the media into paying as much attention to Donald Trump’s monstrous character defects as they are in monitoring Biden’s struggles with old age?
     Nope.
     It’s staying personable: treating each other with respect, kindness and dignity, keeping connected to each other despite our differences.
     We can’t argue that Donald Trump is too abhorrent to be allowed back in the White House, if our tactics mimic his savage insults, slurs and sneers.
     More importantly, we cannot win, much less survive, if we turn on one another.
     None of this is easy, especially now, when the stakes in the election are so desperate; when our choices seem so limited; when time is so short; and when the outcomes are so uncertain.
     It will take humility, discipline and equal bits of luck and love to make sure our debates stay civil and that our conversations nurture, rather than maim, the participants.

AN EXAMPLE of how to do this right way is a comment appended to my last posting on this blog by Jody McPhillips.
     Jody is a friend, but what’s important for this discussion is that she’s a superstar when it comes to making the world a better place.
     She was a reporter at the Providence Journal, where she served a stint in the paper’s Washington bureau. Later, she and her husband, Dave Bloss, the paper’s sports editor, undertook second careers to train new reporters in places that are hostile and dangerous for journalists, like Cambodia, East Timor and Georgia (the country).
    Back home in Rhode Island, they are deeply interested, to put it mildly, in the election.
     Take Jody’s contribution  to the comments section of my last blog posting, in which I criticized Biden’s behavior and tactics in fighting to hold onto the Democratic nomination.
     Hers is the classic way to do a tough, but humane rebuttal.
     She goes after the ideas and not the speaker, at the outset, gently pushing aside anything that suggested it was personal:
     You know I disagree with all of this.
     She avoids saying things like what an idiot her friend, the author, turned out to be. Or questioning his limited qualifications, like mentioning the not-so-well-known college he attended. Or making snide asides: You do remember you’re actually older than Biden?
    Nor does she savage the essay. Instead, she quotes one particularly objectionable passage:
     A "selfish, untruthful bully, who is dividing his party and country" -- really?
     Then moves on to state her case, with some eloquence, about the media and others who are paying undue attention to Biden, while virtually ignoring Trump; she argues that replacing Biden is unworkable; and states  that she’s sticking with him.
     How about a politician of his generation who is putting the best spin on things as he sees it, and who knows that *any* admission of weakness will be relentlessly, cruelly used against him?
     This blatant media pile-on breaks my heart. It is so outrageously unfair that we hear barely a whisper about Donald Trump's incessant, malicious lying and demagoguing during this travesty of a debate, while pundits can't shut up about ashen-faced Joe and his struggles to get words out.
     The guy was exhausted and sick. Bad judgment? Sure. Deserving of all this contempt and anger? NO. I read a lot of public commentary, and I believe actual voters are with Joe, as opposed to the Beltway crowd.
     And I will keep working to get him elected a. because it's too late for any of the fanciful schemes being floated to work and b. because he has earned our support.

HERE’S THE THING (to use one of Biden’s pet phrases): Maybe she’s right.
     Nobody can guarantee that she is, of course. Certainly not me. My claim in what is a long-running discussion is that I have been on both sides of it.
     In March of last year, I argued that Joe Biden was too old to seek a second term, and there were plenty of able substitutes. I  wrote this headline:
                             JOE BIDEN'S GREAT. IT
                             DOESN'T MAKE HIM AN
                            'INDISPENSABLE MAN'
    
      Six months later, I decided that Joe Biden wasn’t too old after all. No other candidate was as well-known; magically, Biden had turned into the indispensable man, which required this headline:
                          'OH, NO!'
                          LET'S NOT WAKE UP NOV. 6, 2024 SAYING:
                         'WE DITCHED JOE BIDEN AS BEING TOO OLD'
    
     Now, because of Biden’ dismal performance in the July 27 debate with Trump, I’ve  again  swerved my vintage Model T around.
     I’m terrified Biden cannot win, especially among a relatively few, but critical, voters in “battleground” states, who seem only dimly aware, if at all, of Trump’s threat to the country.

 LAST NIGHT'S PRESS CONFERENCE did little to settle my jitters. Sure, Biden did better than in the debate, but that’s not saying much. His delivery seemed to me halting, sometimes unclear and hardly inspiring. And he made the much anticipated stumbles, for example, saying “Trump” when he meant Kamala Harris, his vice president.
     This will happen every time he shows up in public: the president of the United States will make news not because of what he says, but whether he survives or flubs the moment.
     I’m imagining the next debate, scheduled for Sept. 10.
     Would a compassionate person, and more importantly, the rest of the country, want to subject Biden to such an ordeal?
     Or would we rather that Donald Trump face Kamala Harris – if Trump, in that case, dared to show up at all?
     People will disagree on the answer.
     But if we are kind and united, we can put Donald Trump behind us on Nov. 5, leaving the historians and the courts to judge the effect of his evil trespass into our politics.