9.23.23

'OH, NO!'
LET'S NOT WAKE UP NOV. 6, 2024 SAYING:
'WE DITCHED JOE BIDEN AS BEING TOO OLD'

JOE BIDEN biking on vacation Aug. 3 in Delaware. CREDIT: Chuck Snyder, Delaware News Journal

 “OH, NO!”
   This is what I don’t want to be saying on Nov. 6, 2024, the morning after.
   “What a fool I was.”
  Realizing that we had a winning candidate, but  that we threw him overboard. His name was Joe Biden. We convinced ourselves that he was “too old” to be president, and so we abandoned him.
   I admit it. I was one of millions of Americans, who, all through the spring, summer and fall of 2023, were talking ourselves out of putting Joe Biden – arguably the best president of our lifetime - back in the White House.
   We wanted someone else.
   There were lots of someone-elses, all  younger.
   My favorite was Gretchen Whitmer, the 52-year-old governor of Michigan.   
   She knew how to run a big, complicated state. She was the object of a kidnap plot, so she knew about the Dark Side. And it was way time to elect a woman president, especially when medical care was being curtailed for women.
   Experienced, smart, qualified, gifted.
   For example, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, 50, who  got that Route 95 bridge fixed and fast. Gavin Newsom, 56, the feisty, combative Democrat who ran a liberal state with an economy bigger than many countries.
   And those were just a few of the many attractive Democrats who were outright invisible to the average American voter.
   Which is what  made it so obvious that Whitmer, or someone just like her, was going to lose the most important election in American history, thereby plunging the United States into madness.
   Why didn’t I see that?
   How could I, and lots of other Democrats and friendly Independents, be so stupid not to see that Joe Biden was the only man or woman who could possibly beat Donald Trump?
   I’ll tell you why I spent so much time arguing that we needed someone new, someone younger: I was – and remain – an old fool.

I MEAN THAT LITERALLY. I’m just five months older than Joe Biden. He’s a mere 80 years old today and will stay that way for the rest of the fall, catching up to me on Nov. 20, when he finally turns 81.
   Anyway, because I know a thing or two about Absolute Old Age, I’ve been arguing that when humans reach our 80s, we have crossed into treacherous territory.
   Terrible things happen to some people, and eventually, to everyone. Nothing gets better.
   We get sick. My wife has driven me to our local emergency room too often this year (kidney stones). Sometimes in our 80s, chronic illnesses start to catch up with us (I’m diabetic, who, in clinical terms, is “well controlled,” but you never know when it’s going to cripple or blind).
   My brain, never a stellar performer, doesn’t work as well as I would like. It takes me a minute or two – and sometimes months – to remember the word or the name I want to say. I don’t think I’m demented yet – but really, you shouldn't take my word for that, for obvious reasons.
   I nap a lot. I turn up the heat in the house when it’s not winter. On any sidewalk, on any day, I will be the slowest pedestrian, and that includes small people clinging to their fathers’ hands, folks with canes or who are pushing baby carriages.
   Were it not for Social Security, pensions and some savings, my wife and I would be on the street, or worse, banging on the doors of our adult children and their offspring.
   “Mom! Baba and Deda are here, and they have suitcases.”
   I no longer work in the career that gave me so much joy and my life such meaning, as a reporter. I simply cannot do such stressful, demanding work; can't do it to pay the taxes on the house, put gas in the car, not to save my life.
   Our friends are dying, and, as it turns out, they're in their 80s. In some months, it has seemed like the only professional-grade writing I do is for my friends' obituaries.
   It should be said that my wife (who, like Joe, will reach the 81-mark in November) and I are the lucky ones. We’ve survived the scary sounding illnesses like cancer and cardiac defects, even avoided Covid, so that, at the moment, life is pretty much as it has been for big parts of two centuries.
   But well off as we are today, my experience with Absolute Old Age is not an argument about qualifying for any paid job, to say nothing of providing resume material for something as demanding as commander-in-chief, leader of the free world, chief economist, climate change crusader, champion of civil rights and national problem solver.
   We are all different. Joe Biden seems to be a more active and competent 80-year-old than I was. On the other hand, he has someone to cut the grass, vacuum the house and change the kitty litter.
   Fact is, I'm an expert only on an older me, not Joe Biden.

TRUMP in a golf cart, July 28, 2022 in New Jersey. Biden on his bike in 2023. CREDITS: Salon; Delaware News Journal

 BIDDEN IS THE ONLY DEMOCRAT with a track record (spectacular) and a recognizable first and last name who has stood up  to Trump, and who can do so again.
   In the past, I’ve argued there is still time for an alternate candidate to get publicized, recognized and endorsed by most voters. That’s just wrong. Lot’s of Americans don’t pay close attention to elections and politics. That’s not a good thing; but it’s reality. Jared Polis; J.B. Pritzker. Do you recognize their names? Anyone?
   Let’s praise Joe Biden. He, in his own words, rescued “the soul of America.” He returned the nation to normal. He is a decent man – as decent as possible for someone with that amount of power.
   Instead of running him down as an Old Man, let’s celebrate the fact that he regularly rides a bicycle, not a golf cart. Maybe, exiting Air Force One, he should ride his bike down the ramp, finishing up with  a couple of wheelies on the tarmac. Mainly, let’s show some enthusiasm for all the stuff he can do and will do in the future.
   And let’s not focus on the nonsense that “when he leaves office, he’ll be 86.”
   What counts most of all is what he does in the next 15 months.
   The Democratic nominee will be just 81 for the majority of the campaign. As a happy warrior-style candidate, he’ll do both jobs – president and presidential candidate – better than anyone else.
   Let’s think of ourselves as looking back in 2024 on the day after the Nov. 5 election.
   Will we look back in sorrow and shame?
   Or will we look back in joy, having put a  democrat – not an autocrat – back in the White House?